One of our original members, Bob Bielefeld, energetically researched songs from the Renaissance, Middle Ages, Baroque era, and the Celtic traditions for our performing repertoire. He visited university libraries and wrote out melodies from manuscript facsimiles, adding chords from more modern traditions that give the songs a very unique inflection. Many of the tunes are published in “Cantiga's Renaissance Festival Favorites,” available from our online shoppe.
Out of respect to Bob's significant body of work, our bassist Elisabeth Ellison, who holds a graduate certificate in Medieval Music Performance Practice, continues to search out and arrange melodies that connect our generation to “the unbroken line of the humanity of man.”
Explore the eras and genres we perform
The Cantigas de Santa Maria is a large and significant collection of over 400 songs commissioned by King Alfonso X "El Sabio" (1221 - 1284) in Spain. The text of the Cantigas was written in the medieval Galician Portuguese language and recount stories and miracles of the Virgin Mary. Often referenced by number, the songs actually have titles, and stories, some of which are dramatic, even shocking and gruesome. The most popular one we perform is Como Poden ("The Lame Man Healed at Salas"), and you'll often hear us call “Cantiga 166” from the stage.
The other Cantigas we perform:
CSM 48: The Stream that was Diverted for the Monks of Montserrat
CSM 100: St. Mary, Star of Day. Every tenth Cantiga is a hymn of praise to St. Mary.
CSM 108: Merlin and the Jew - Merlin prays to the Virgin Mary that the baby of a Jew would be born with his head on backwards (!!!)
CSM 274: The monk who made a robe of prayers
CSM 281: The knight who became the devil's vassal
CSM 353: The boy who offered his food to (a statue of) the Christ child
Sourcing the Cantigas
Can You Actually Read That?
Yes - with some training in their notation, which differs slightly from mensural notation of the 13th century. The Cantigas are preserved in four manuscripts, the facsimiles of which are viewable online. One, the Código de los Músicos, includes detailed illuminations of musicians. To perform and share them, we transcribe them into modern musical notation.
The Camino de Santiago
In the footsteps of the cantigas
Multiple members of Cantiga have walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the ancient pilgrim route that pre-dates the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Martha made the pilgrimage in 2015 with her harp. Misti Bernard and Joachim Zwick have also walked. Our bassist Elisabeth Ellison walked the Camino in 2025, carrying along a medieval rebec and playing Cantigas in the places mentioned in the songs. Here Elisabeth is in the church in Salas which is the setting of Cantiga 166.
Medieval Music
The Cantigas are medieval, and we play several other medieval songs and dances. Examples:
Lamento di Tristano/La Rotta - an Italian two-part (slow/fast) dance from the 14th century.
A troubador song of a type called a Pastourelle, titled “Out in the Meadow." The song, tyical of a Pastourelle, describes a shepherdess fending off the unwelcome advances of a knight.
Amoroso - a very pretty couple's dance from the 14th century.
English Country Dance and Ballads
English Country Dance originated during the Renaissance (at latest), was collected, written down, and published a bit later, beginning in 1651. The very same tunes are still used by dancers across the Western world to this day. The catalogue of English Country Dance tunes continued to grow over centuries, and new tunes in this genre are still being written.
Examples: The Hole in the Wall, Argeers, Goddesses, Nonesuch
Broadside Ballads:
Just as medieval minstrels rhymed and sang narratives that included news of the day, writers after the invention of the printing press distributed rhymed discourse, often set to already-popular melodies, on broadside paper from the 16th through the 18th century.
Examples: Packington's Pound, Hector the Hero (much later - from 1903)
The Renaissance
Staines Morris is an English Country Dance and appears in The English Dancing Master, though it was first notated as a lute piece.
Sy Pour T'aymer - a basse danse from Arbeau's Orchesographie
Bransles ("brawls") - not fight songs! A bransle is a dance for several couples.
The Queen's Alman - a dance tune by William Byrd. The later, English version of an earlier Italian song called “La Monica” (The Nun). La Monica was one of the solid gold smash hits of the Renaissance, and its melody was included in other music, even sacred chorales. Just like today, songs of earlier eras got “re-mixed,” sampled, re-arranged, and acquired different lyrics as they spread across Europe and the British Isles.